Cakery
I have visitors over the next few weeks so am upping my cooking game to incorporate their various food preferences, from vegan through vegetarian to very traditional English food through pescatarian, carnivore, a couple of food allergens and a go on I will eat anything. Makes life interesting as I tend to recycle the same old same old when its just the two of us. No one told me adulthood meant thinking of, shopping for and making evening meals for the rest of my born days so its not surprise now I am this age that my inspiration for daily dinner has got up and wandered off into the sunset. Which is why I love having a bit of a bash, people over for supper or lunch and people staying in our little casa.
Today my thoughts are on desserts and mindful of my vegan and vegetarian visitors I am torn between these delights. First off the block is a firm favourite with one my guests, cherry bakewell, and I just want to say that I will probably make any of these as a tray bake, easier to portion and store. Also note that where is says butter, milk or cream you can sub with plant hased spread, nut or oat milks, and oil instead of eggs. As you will see apart from the Cherry Bakewell I have tinkered with the toppings to make them my own. Click on the images to go to the recipes.
Now not everyone is a fan of almond so my next choice is a nut of a different kind, date and walnut with candied walnut topping. To make candied walnut topping place castor sugar in a non stick frying pan and heat gently as it starts to liquidise take off the heat and toss some crumbled walnuts in it and quickly as to the top of your cake. I made this as a lighter alternative to Christmas cake for my husband, he is not a huge cake person, as in he is not a fan of cake not a huge cake person! He wolfed it down which is praise indeed.
Not to be outdone and to keep with the fruity theme a pineapple and coconut cake, again I adapted it a little decorating with glace cherries and toasted pineapple, here its served with cream but it would be at home in a pool of custard or for vegans a sweet almond sauce made with almond milk, vanilla and cornflour. You could ditch the custard and instead make up some plain glace icing mixing icing sugar with a little milk or nut milk until it is just runny enough to cover the top without running off the sides then sprinkle with toasted dessicated coconut. Get creative!
Finally taking the lemony cakery to the next level lemon and blueberry drizzle with lavender sugar topping (lavender sugar is just granulated sugar with lavender flowers mixed in, preferably stored in an air tight jar for a while so the flavour absorbs, but you can easily pick fresh lavender dip in water then granulated sugar and leave to dry on paper towels and use that as decoration), a deliciously moist cake with a dense crumb more like a pudding really, again for our vegan visitors I would look at serving this as is, its moist enough to eat with a nice cup of tea or coffee
Recipes are pretty simple and straighforward click on each of the photos for the links to the various recipe pages.
So which would you choose and should I do more than one?
